------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Backup and Migrate for Drupal 5.x by Ronan Dowling, Gorton Studios - ronan (at) gortonstudios (dot) com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DESCRIPTION: This module makes the task of backing up your Drupal database and migrating data from one Drupal install to another easier. It provides a function to backup the entire database to file or download, and to restore from a previous backup. You can also schedule the backup operation. Compression of backup files is also supported. There are options to exclude the data from certain tables (such as cache or search index tables) to increase efficiency by ignoring data that does not need to be backed up or migrated. The backup files are a list of SQL statements which can be executed with a tool such as phpMyAdmin or the command-line mysql client. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- INSTALLATION: Put the module in your drupal modules directory and enable it in admin/build/modules. Configure and use the module at admin/content/backup_migrate OPTIONAL: Enable token.module to allow token replacement in backup file names. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- VERY IMPORTANT SECURITY NOTE: Backup files may contain sensitive data and by default, are saved to your web server in a directory normally accessible by the public. This could lead to a very serious security vulnerability. Backup and Migrate attempts to protect backup files using a .htaccess file, but this is not guaranteed to work on all environments (and is guaranteed to fail on web servers that are not apache). You should test to see if your backup files are publicly accessible, and if in doubt do not save backups to the server. OTHER WARNINGS: A failed restore can destroy your database and therefore your entire Drupal installation. ALWAYS TEST BACKUP FILES ON A TEST ENVIRONMENT FIRST. If in doubt do not use this module. This module has only be tested with MySQL and probably does not work with any other dbms. If you have experiences with Postres or any other dbms and are willing to help test and modify the module to work with it, please contact the developer at ronan (at) gortonstudios (dot) com. Make sure your php timeout is set high enough to complete a backup or restore operation. Larger databases require more time. Also, while the module attempts to keep memory needs to a minimum, a backup or restore will require significantly more memory then most Drupal operations. If your backup file contains the 'sessions' table you will likely be logged out after you run a restore. To avoid this, exclude the sessions table when creating your backups. Be aware though that you will need to recreate the sessions table if you use this backup on an empty database. Do not change the file extension of backup files or the restore function will be unable to determine the compression type the file and will not function correctly. IF A RESTORE FAILS: Don't panic, the restore file should work with phpMyAdmin's import function, or with the mysql command line tool. If it does not, then it is likely corrupt; you may panic now. MAKE SURE THAT THIS MODULE IS NOT YOUR ONLY FORM OF BACKUP. NOTE TO DEVEL USERS: If you experience memory limit errors while restoring, try disabling the 'Collect query info' setting in devel. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------